Szemere Bertalan Hungarian Law Enforcement History Scientific Society
With history for security
An independent scientific society, founded in 1990 and registered by the Metropolitan Court in 1991, operating as a non-governmental organisation, whose vocation is the research of Hungarian law enforcement history and the dissemination of its research findings.
About the Society
Our Society, founded in 1990 and registered by the Metropolitan Court in 1991, is an independent voluntary association of professionals interested in the history of Hungarian law enforcement. Our members are engaged in historical research and teaching on Hungarian law enforcement history and on the history of the armed bodies related to it. Our membership is drawn predominantly from the personnel of law enforcement agencies, the staff of public collections and the teaching staff of higher education institutions.
Some forty members hold scholarly or academic degrees, ranging from membership of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the degree of doctor universitatis to the ranks of professor and assistant lecturer. Most of them are recognised authorities in Hungary's scholarly life and higher education today.
Our aim is to contribute to the advancement of Hungarian and universal history through the cultivation of our field and the processing of written sources and material relics, and — through the exploration of our law enforcement history past and the application of the lessons learned — to the development of law enforcement. Our organisation is not profit-oriented: we sustain ourselves from membership fees, donations and the fruits of our research work.
Our publications
Scholarly periodical · since 1991
Acta Historiae Praesidii Ordinis — the only Hungarian-language scholarly periodical publishing scholarly treatments by researchers of law enforcement history. Peer-reviewed studies, published once or twice a year.
Scholarly periodical · since 1995
Nuntiotones Historiae Praesidii Ordinis — a bulletin of our association's life and of operational events relating to the cultivation of law enforcement history. It generally appears twice a year.
Book series
The Society is the publisher of six scholarly book series on law enforcement history: heritage, bequests, sources, auxiliary sciences, studies, and the Salutem series.
Scholarly articles
514 studies by 137 authors have appeared in the Society's periodicals to date. Selected studies are available on the website — they can also be read in structured form. The volumes of our scholarly periodicals and book series can be read and downloaded in PDF format.
The 11 authors of the selected works, in alphabetical order by source file. Click on a name to access the author's profile.
System of honours
Our learned society has established its own system of honours in order to recognise the outstanding scholars of law enforcement history and its selfless supporters; the system took shape over more than a decade, taking account of the experience gained. The system was devised by Parádi József and designed by Zeidler Sándor.
The system of honours comprises six elements, established between 1997 and 2002.
The first element of the system, established on 27 April 1997.
Established on 24 April 1998.
Established on 24 April 1999.
Established on 24 April 2000.
Established on 24 April 2001, in memory of the Society's namesake.
Established on 24 April 2002, a two-thirds scale replica of the 1929 “Aviation Officer's Dirk” of the Royal Hungarian Army.
Please note. The full list of recipients is not public and is therefore not included on our website. The elements of the system of honours and their certificates can be viewed on the Awards page.
International relations
Since its foundation the Society has been building professional relations with Hungarian and foreign institutions and scholarly organisations pursuing similar fields of research.
Professional relations with the Wiener Kriminalmuseum in Vienna, which operates in the historic Leopoldstadt district, in the Seifensiederhaus, and is one of Austria's oldest collections on the history of policing.
wien.kriminalmuseum.at
In 1994, developing the professional contacts of previous years, our Society joined the German Police History Society, which was founded in 1989 at the Polizei-Führungsakademie in Münster and has since remained the leading professional body for policing history in the German-speaking world.
polizeigeschichte.com · clio-online.de · phsb.eu
A cooperation agreement was concluded with the leadership of the MKCsBK (Hungarian Royal Gendarme Veterans Association), which is registered in the United States but operates across every inhabited continent.
csendor.com
Regular working relations with the official historical service of the French Gendarmerie (Service Historique de la Gendarmerie Nationale – SHGN), which operates in Vincennes as part of the Historical Service of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces, and with the French Gendarmerie History Foundation.
gendarmerie.interieur.gouv.fr · servicehistorique.sga.defense.gouv.fr
Representing the Society, Dr Parádi József took part as an invited speaker in the First International Colloquium on Gendarmerie History, held at the Sorbonne on 10–11 March 2000. His paper appeared in the conference proceedings Gendarmerie, État et société au XIXe siècle, edited by Jean-Noël Luc (Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002, 487 pp.).
calenda.org · journals.openedition.org
The Society's work is cited as a reference source in the comprehensive bibliography Bibliographie de l'histoire de la gendarmerie by Édouard Ebel, Benoît Haberbusch and Jean-Noël Luc, published in 2025 by the Historical Service of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces and the CRGN of the Gendarmerie Nationale.
force-publique.net · gendarmerie.interieur.gouv.fr
Scholarly forums
Notice
As part of this work, the scholarly works published in our periodicals are being progressively made available on our website with multilingual scholarly translation and enhanced structured search facilities.
